@meagloth and others: Anyone want to try an internet game for those without play groups IRL? Anyone done that before? How's it work?
Hmm...I don't know how well that would work. I think it's been done before, but I think it would really only work over Skype or something similar, and that would be a whole ordeal, not to mention time and stuff.
@meagloth and others: Anyone want to try an internet game for those without play groups IRL? Anyone done that before? How's it work?
Hmm...I don't know how well that would work. I think it's been done before, but I think it would really only work over Skype or something similar, and that would be a whole ordeal, not to mention time and stuff.
It looks better than 4E for sure. It looks like a simplified version of 3E. There are fewer races and classes. Overall, I think I like 3E better because it's more complex. Not that I like complexity for the sake of complexity, but the complexity of 3E actually adds to the flavor, options, and versatility in which to play the game. One thing I do like about 5E over 3E is the multiclassing system. No more of that XP penalty BS if you have a class two levels or more higher than another one. Another thing I like is that Fighter is no longer just a tank like in 4E, and returns as the main physical damage dealing class. In 4E, for some reason they made Rogues and Rangers the main physical damage dealers.
I assume that they will add more classes, and possibly races, in later additions. They always do.
1: The way they've handled humans...+1 ability score to everything?? Really?? I'm normally a human player, and I think that's ridiculous. (luckily they've provided an alternative which I think I'm going to go with instead)
3: Scimitar as a finesse weapon...I guess every rogue in the world is going to use that, now, instead of the rapier. In the play-test they did a similar thing with the katana; again we have this whole "western weapons are for brute force and ignorance while eastern weapons are for grace and dexterity!" rubbish, and I'm sure we'll see this in the hardback version, when they add exotic weapons. Why does everybody think that the katana is so much faster than the longsword? It isn't! They both move at similar speeds, the difference is down to the wielder not the weapon! *sigh*
1. I had the same reaction as you at first, but then realized that humans don't get subraces that give bonuses to proficiencies and other things. But I also think the alternative is better.
3. But rapiers are 1d8, while scimitars are only 1d6. So rapier does have an advantage. But I do find scimitars preferable though, as they are both finesse AND light.
first impression is that I quite like the changes to the spell memorisation system
It's kind of like a combination of Mage and Sorcerer. You can copy spells into your spellbook, so you're not stuck with spells that you only have one chance to choose, but you're also not locked into any particular spells you have to memorize ahead of time. I like this.
To be honest, I'm more sad that they stopped Longswords from being used as a main hand in 2-weapon fighting now.
Yeah, I don't like that either. But I guess you can make a house rule that allows longsword as a light weapon, but remove its versatile property. That should kind of balance it out.
I agree weilding two Longswords is silly, but it used to be a decent main hand paired with a light weapon, now you require two light weapons to dual-wield. Then again, I guess if you had a d8 mainhand it would throw out the almost-balance between 2-hander wielders and dual wielders.
I typically like to have my character dual-wield longswords. But I agree that typical medieval longswords are too big to be dual-wielded. I like swords that are somewhere between longswords and shortswords in size, maybe ~3 feet long, but I still consider them longswords (on the short end of the longsword spectrum). It's very common for Drow to dual-wield longswords.
@meagloth and others: Anyone want to try an internet game for those without play groups IRL? Anyone done that before? How's it work?
Hmm...I don't know how well that would work. I think it's been done before, but I think it would really only work over Skype or something similar, and that would be a whole ordeal, not to mention time and stuff.
There are sites for those who want to play online. I know of one that has dice rolling tools and allow for custom character sheets.
My first impression is... JUST GIVE US BACK 2nd EDITION RULES, NOW!
As @Dee pointed out, second ed hasn't gone anywhere, but they've got to move the game forward. 5th Ed seems to be a distillation of the best bits of 3e and 4e with a lot more advice for the newbie about how to create an interesting character rather than a piece in a skirmish game.
To be honest, I'm more sad that they stopped Longswords from being used as a main hand in 2-weapon fighting now.
I have a feeling that there will be a feat to let you dual-wield non-light weapons. Part of the "Specific beats General" rule. At the very least, I would expect that rangers can wield normal weapons in their main hand. The rule just means that for normal characters, if you want to dual-wield effectively you have to use light weapons.
Worth noting that there's no penalties for doing so.
To be honest, I'm more sad that they stopped Longswords from being used as a main hand in 2-weapon fighting now.
I have a feeling that there will be a feat to let you dual-wield non-light weapons. Part of the "Specific beats General" rule. At the very least, I would expect that rangers can wield normal weapons in their main hand. The rule just means that for normal characters, if you want to dual-wield effectively you have to use light weapons.
Worth noting that there's no penalties for doing so.
Hopefully there will be a Longsword Finesse feat as well, so Rogues can use them for Sneak Attacks.
I think the most interesting thing to me is the return to "realistic" ability scores. I mean, yeah, you can roll 4d6 and keep the top three rolls, but if you want to give your players a more standardized array, the point-buy caps you at 15.
15! I think a lot of players are going to have to get used to not having maxed out ability scores every time they play.
I also enjoy that spells don't scale automatically, but they can be cast at higher levels to get better effects. Magic Missile may end up being a bit lackluster at higher levels, but it's an interesting mechanic (and one that I tinkered with for a while in my own time a while back). For the first time in a long time I'm interested in the idea of playing a wizard, and that's very cool.
I'm curious to know how monsters will play out. I could see running some straight-forward encounters or dungeons with a series of basic enemies, but I'd really like to see what a dragon looks like.
All that being said, I do appreciate Wizards sharing the basic ruleset for free. It may not be a sufficient olive branch to cut into Pathfinder's user base, but it's a step in the right direction I think.
Yeah, they managed to keep the one good thing from 4e by making wizards not entirely useless at 1st level. Between at-will cantrips and the ability to cast from a variety of memorized spells, 1st level wizards never again have to know the frustration of walking into an undead-filled crypt with only one Sleep spell memorized.
I will try this system, it looks pretty good to me. But I will reserve judgement on 5ed until I see what they have done with the forgotten realms lore this time around
The problem with 2e is it sucked if you were a wizard at low levels or a fighter at high levels. A first level wizard got one spell which unless it was Sleep was exactly as useful as a successful attack by any other class.
At high levels, a wizard could murder entire armies of enemies whilst fighters are whittling them down one at a time.
I'm pretty curious how monsters will be handled... I liked how 3.x made the HD system universal, and monsters really did work the same as characters... they had different abilities, but many were recreatable. The acceptance that monsters could make interesting PCs was also good, though I know many LA values were downright inane, like nobody plsytested them. Melee builds were usually worse offensively, though might be pretty resilient. The undead were almost entirely unplayable, being largely melee with low HP, and bad BAB progression. So I also wonder what's going to be the official rules for monstrous PCs.
2nd ed had many issues, as noted wizards are harsh until about lvl 3, yet become walking artillery ~lvl 5, able to dominate the battlefield utterly. Fighters become meatshields, rogues exist to disarm traps and clerics are buffbots/healbots. 2nd ed imho limited the roles you could actually play. I also disliked that two similar lvl characters of the same class were mechanically identical. Classes felt like straightjackets. The non-consistent tables were fugly, all of them, but rewarding very high stats so ridiculously well with nothing in between made no sense. 2nd ed though was easy to learn the basics of, and building NPCs would be a snap.
3.x benefited a lot from opening up multiclassing and the skill system, and adding feats was very good, but unless you're borderline savant, using more than a few books was hard, and without sourcebooks, some classes suffered a great deal, esp fighters, as they have so many feats as their only benefit. Rogues also benefited from more stuff. The annoyance I noticed was that casters inebitably got big boosts from most books. FR casters were insanely good. And as noted, building characters and NPCs could be labouriously unrewarding... lots of casual players will like 5th ed balancing this out a bit.
Imho, 3.x rewarded people if they wanted to min-max, but 3.0 was balanced for non powergamers... in 3.5, especially in later expansions, you had to build 'good' characters or a high cr monster WILL tear you a new butt. Many players loved that 3.5 allowed very powerful chatacters that could do nearly anything (gish with turn undead could massacre a fighter in melee, and could usually cast 8th lvl spells), and I am often among them, but I love flavour, so I often preferred to build around an archtype rather than straight powergaming, though I hated weak characters, so most were solid.
As for 3.x casting, metamagic feats were an AWESOME inclusion, if hard to make the most of. In 3.5, I built a high level metamagic caster that relied largely on metamagicing Seething Eyebane, a 1st level touch spell. Very weird, but could handle anything with eyes pretty easily, and still had his other spells. Did similar builds tonmake FB a viable high level slot, also fun. 3.x rewarded creativity and rules knowledge, but harshly penalized people that made bad mechanical choices. It was hard to build a terrible character in 2nd, baring bad stats, but in 3rd you could make atrociously weak characters.
I've actually never played a sit-down game with other people before, but that changes tomorrow afternoon . I guess we'll be running 3.5 for a few more months til this version shapes up, but I was able to pick up the starter kit at the local gaming shop FAR earlier than I was supposed to be able to. From what I can tell of the rules, it's much closer to 2 and 3, with the best parts of 4 thrown in. You have to at least give WoTC credit in the fact that they fan-tested this thing to death and basically asked players what they wanted. Whether it can dislodge Pathfinder is an iffy proposition, but as someone who is just starting to play real games, the new launch couldn't come at a better time.
Actually, my best fighters often were not str based... some of these werent even giant balls of munchkin cheese! ...but most were cheese. Mind you, 13 is nice and not too high, very easy to reach after a bit. PA builds were pretty easy to design and use though. I think Paladins need only 13 str for chaneling, and can then add their cha to damage. REALLY funny if you've been pumping cha, when your cha pumps out ubersaves, boosts AC and damage.
I agree skills got weird after a certain point, and most folks didnt care about the flavour in skills, so it was extra annoyance for nothing. Feats were a mixed bag obviously, some so awful nobody sane would use them, others like Karmic Strike were crazy in certain builds. Same with multiclassing, can be good but many people didnt like munchkin builds (ie 3 lvls of swashbuckler 5 invisible blade 2 fighter 9 rogue 1 assassin type builds...), so it wasnt perfect by any means.
Wweellll... 2nd ed had HEAPS of books too, but stuck with kits... most of which were just flavour anyways.
The best choice is to look up builds online if you arent good at building. If you want a fun, strong, simple character use a Construct building Artificer. Really cool how you can churn some helpers out!
@ZanathKariashi have you looked st 5th yet? Curious how someone very heavily inclined towards 2nd ed feels about this edition. 3.x reinvented the wheel, but this seems a bit more hybridized.
I've been looking at this for the last couple of days while talking about a possible try out game Sith some online folks.... And honestly, as far as I can see so far, it's a mess. First impressions tells me it suffers from all of the usual DnD problems, except now they seem worse than ever. For example, it's like they've officially given up on trying to make fighters a viable (not to mention interesting) choice. Wizards outpower them even at level 1, and the divide just grows from there.
Maybe things will change with the advanced rules... I'm going to give it a chance, but I'm doubtful. Multiclassing seems especially open to abuse (Delegating Fighters forever to a lonely existance on the one-level-dip shelf in order to have wizards casting spells in heavy armour - yes, you heard correctly: arcane spell failure is gone).
So yeah. My advise for interested folk: Try the full game out if you want to, but don't spend any money on this until you're sure you like it. They're asking for a lot of money for those books but I'm far from convinced we'd be getting our money's worth just yet.
Yea I agree with @scriver. It has a great many things I don't really like. For now I think I'll stick with 3.5 and 2nd. Depending on my mood. It's possible it will be altered in the future but... I don't really want to drop that kind of money for nothing if it turns out not be worth it.
Well first of all you mixed up "delegating" and "relegating". Secondly, I actually quite like the Fighter in 5e, admittedly he still lacks late-game power but at least there's a clear path to versatility with the fighting styles and martial traditions, unlike 3.x whereby you really had to manage your stats and build if you wanted the right feats to get the options you wanted. Also Action Surge and ability to get extra attacks at full attack bonus could still give him the potential to do some massive burst. If I wanted a fighter to put out damage like a late-level wizard, I'd play Exalted or Earthdawn.
My starter set will be arriving this week, and unless a test playthrough I've signed up for fails massively, then I'll be grabbing at least the PHB. Hell I'll probably pick it up anyway as I have with every other edition since 2e. At around 26 quid on Amazon, it's still cheaper than buying a new video game and I'll probably find myself in a tabletop game of it at some point.
Yeah, I have to admit i'm hoping they errata in some arcane spell failure in the PHB, or the lack of arcane spell failure in here was just an oversight. Then again, ASF wasn't in 4e either, so maybe it's deliberate.
To be honest, I can live with a lot of the smoothing off of the edges that's happened in 5e, but I could have lived without a return to 3e-style multiclassing.
A Wizard does 1d10 fire damage (or 1d8 frost) at level 1. At range, and without using up a spellslot, so they can cast it how many times they want (and attack rolls are no longer co-dependent on STR or DEX, but based on INT bonus instead). A fighter only makes that kind of damage if he forgoes the use of shields. By the time a fighter gets his 4th attack (level 20), the wizard have already been doing 4d10 damage for three levels with a lousy cantrip.
So yeah, once again the wizard (And I haven't looked at Clerics very closely yet, but probably those too), disregarding their vast versatility beyond this field for the sake of argument, outperform fighters at the one thing fighters are supposed to be good at. Only in 5th Ed, they do so from the get go. And their advantage will only grow as the spell lists are expanded upon in future books.
@Squire - No, it's not about "fighters putting out damage like a late-level wizard". It's about having a place in the party, being useful, and having a purpose. What is the purpose of a Fighter? What can they do that no other class can do? Where do they excel? In DnD, Fighters still carry the burden heritage of being "the last resort class" from 1st and 2nd Edition days, where Fighters were basically just a fallback option if your random rolls didn't get you anything better. No, this might not have been how every player thought, but it was how the designers felt, and it permeated the game. And Fighters to this day carry the burden of being mechanically uninteresting and a one-trick-pony who quickly becomes obsolete as other classes learns to perform that one trick better than him. In 5th Ed, the last weasling of a purpose - that casters need Fighters to protect them because of their lower HP and AC (which was never really true anyway) - is hanging from it's last thread, because now casters can be as well protected from getting hit as fighters can without any chance of spell failure.
And lastly, be on the lookout for Mountain Dwarf gishes. Gets +2 STR and CON, gets to wear Medium Armour by default, and gets Warhammers and Battleaxes as racial proficiencies. I'm not a good powerbuilder by any means, but as far as I can see this will be the build of choice of those who are. Maybe future books will change that, though.
I might have misinterpretted something here, because I have only scanned the rules myself, but wouldn't a lvl 1 fighter do a great deal more damage than 1d10 at first level?
Even exclusing action surges and feats and fighter proficencies, I fighter would still expect to add strength to the damage roll. 1d10 = 5.5dps 1d10+3 (or 4) = 8.5dps, which is a massively significant difference for just a basic attack
More to the point, a fighter with the great weapon fighting style (reroll 1&2s) and a 2d6 weapon is doing 6-12 damage before strength bonuses, which pushes the damage up a bit.
I have to admit though, a d10 damage ranged cantrip is massively broken. I still can't believe that made it through testing.
@ajwz - I said "A fighter only makes that kind of damage if he forgoes the use of shields". That leaves only 1d8 weapons. Yes, you are correct that they still deal more damage after bonuses, but that the cantrip is also ranged, 120 ft. For comparison, the range of a heavy crossbow (1d10+bonuses) is 100 ft.
@Walstafa - A Great Weapon Fighting style character only rerolls 1s and 2s on the first damage roll, leading to some average I'm too unskilled at math to calculate, but you can definitely still end up with 2-12 damage.
And this still means you have to optimize your fighter to get what the wizard gets by default.
I'd have put it d8, on a par with a longbow. The fact that it scales as it levels and is essentially free to cast does make it feel a bit sick. To echo @scriver I don't think that many level 20 characters will be able to put out 4d10 damage every round and have it be the baseline option. Then again, I haven't see the magic items yet, so i could be wrong about high level damage potential.
Comments
I assume that they will add more classes, and possibly races, in later additions. They always do.
Why do you say that? Scimitars are considered light weapons, which means that they are intended to be used for dual wielding.
1. I had the same reaction as you at first, but then realized that humans don't get subraces that give bonuses to proficiencies and other things. But I also think the alternative is better.
3. But rapiers are 1d8, while scimitars are only 1d6. So rapier does have an advantage. But I do find scimitars preferable though, as they are both finesse AND light.
It's kind of like a combination of Mage and Sorcerer. You can copy spells into your spellbook, so you're not stuck with spells that you only have one chance to choose, but you're also not locked into any particular spells you have to memorize ahead of time. I like this.
Yeah, I don't like that either. But I guess you can make a house rule that allows longsword as a light weapon, but remove its versatile property. That should kind of balance it out.
I typically like to have my character dual-wield longswords. But I agree that typical medieval longswords are too big to be dual-wielded. I like swords that are somewhere between longswords and shortswords in size, maybe ~3 feet long, but I still consider them longswords (on the short end of the longsword spectrum). It's very common for Drow to dual-wield longswords.
Worth noting that there's no penalties for doing so.
15! I think a lot of players are going to have to get used to not having maxed out ability scores every time they play.
I also enjoy that spells don't scale automatically, but they can be cast at higher levels to get better effects. Magic Missile may end up being a bit lackluster at higher levels, but it's an interesting mechanic (and one that I tinkered with for a while in my own time a while back). For the first time in a long time I'm interested in the idea of playing a wizard, and that's very cool.
I'm curious to know how monsters will play out. I could see running some straight-forward encounters or dungeons with a series of basic enemies, but I'd really like to see what a dragon looks like.
All that being said, I do appreciate Wizards sharing the basic ruleset for free. It may not be a sufficient olive branch to cut into Pathfinder's user base, but it's a step in the right direction I think.
At high levels, a wizard could murder entire armies of enemies whilst fighters are whittling them down one at a time.
2nd ed had many issues, as noted wizards are harsh until about lvl 3, yet become walking artillery ~lvl 5, able to dominate the battlefield utterly. Fighters become meatshields, rogues exist to disarm traps and clerics are buffbots/healbots. 2nd ed imho limited the roles you could actually play. I also disliked that two similar lvl characters of the same class were mechanically identical. Classes felt like straightjackets. The non-consistent tables were fugly, all of them, but rewarding very high stats so ridiculously well with nothing in between made no sense. 2nd ed though was easy to learn the basics of, and building NPCs would be a snap.
3.x benefited a lot from opening up multiclassing and the skill system, and adding feats was very good, but unless you're borderline savant, using more than a few books was hard, and without sourcebooks, some classes suffered a great deal, esp fighters, as they have so many feats as their only benefit. Rogues also benefited from more stuff. The annoyance I noticed was that casters inebitably got big boosts from most books. FR casters were insanely good. And as noted, building characters and NPCs could be labouriously unrewarding... lots of casual players will like 5th ed balancing this out a bit.
Imho, 3.x rewarded people if they wanted to min-max, but 3.0 was balanced for non powergamers... in 3.5, especially in later expansions, you had to build 'good' characters or a high cr monster WILL tear you a new butt.
As for 3.x casting, metamagic feats were an AWESOME inclusion, if hard to make the most of. In 3.5, I built a high level metamagic caster that relied largely on metamagicing Seething Eyebane, a 1st level touch spell. Very weird, but could handle anything with eyes pretty easily, and still had his other spells. Did similar builds tonmake FB a viable high level slot, also fun. 3.x rewarded creativity and rules knowledge, but harshly penalized people that made bad mechanical choices. It was hard to build a terrible character in 2nd, baring bad stats, but in 3rd you could make atrociously weak characters.
I agree skills got weird after a certain point, and most folks didnt care about the flavour in skills, so it was extra annoyance for nothing. Feats were a mixed bag obviously, some so awful nobody sane would use them, others like Karmic Strike were crazy in certain builds. Same with multiclassing, can be good but many people didnt like munchkin builds (ie 3 lvls of swashbuckler 5 invisible blade 2 fighter 9 rogue 1 assassin type builds...), so it wasnt perfect by any means.
Wweellll... 2nd ed had HEAPS of books too, but stuck with kits... most of which were just flavour anyways.
The best choice is to look up builds online if you arent good at building. If you want a fun, strong, simple character use a Construct building Artificer. Really cool how you can churn some helpers out!
Maybe things will change with the advanced rules... I'm going to give it a chance, but I'm doubtful. Multiclassing seems especially open to abuse (Delegating Fighters forever to a lonely existance on the one-level-dip shelf in order to have wizards casting spells in heavy armour - yes, you heard correctly: arcane spell failure is gone).
So yeah. My advise for interested folk: Try the full game out if you want to, but don't spend any money on this until you're sure you like it. They're asking for a lot of money for those books but I'm far from convinced we'd be getting our money's worth just yet.
My starter set will be arriving this week, and unless a test playthrough I've signed up for fails massively, then I'll be grabbing at least the PHB. Hell I'll probably pick it up anyway as I have with every other edition since 2e. At around 26 quid on Amazon, it's still cheaper than buying a new video game and I'll probably find myself in a tabletop game of it at some point.
To be honest, I can live with a lot of the smoothing off of the edges that's happened in 5e, but I could have lived without a return to 3e-style multiclassing.
So yeah, once again the wizard (And I haven't looked at Clerics very closely yet, but probably those too), disregarding their vast versatility beyond this field for the sake of argument, outperform fighters at the one thing fighters are supposed to be good at. Only in 5th Ed, they do so from the get go. And their advantage will only grow as the spell lists are expanded upon in future books.
@Squire - No, it's not about "fighters putting out damage like a late-level wizard". It's about having a place in the party, being useful, and having a purpose. What is the purpose of a Fighter? What can they do that no other class can do? Where do they excel? In DnD, Fighters still carry the burden heritage of being "the last resort class" from 1st and 2nd Edition days, where Fighters were basically just a fallback option if your random rolls didn't get you anything better. No, this might not have been how every player thought, but it was how the designers felt, and it permeated the game. And Fighters to this day carry the burden of being mechanically uninteresting and a one-trick-pony who quickly becomes obsolete as other classes learns to perform that one trick better than him. In 5th Ed, the last weasling of a purpose - that casters need Fighters to protect them because of their lower HP and AC (which was never really true anyway) - is hanging from it's last thread, because now casters can be as well protected from getting hit as fighters can without any chance of spell failure.
And lastly, be on the lookout for Mountain Dwarf gishes. Gets +2 STR and CON, gets to wear Medium Armour by default, and gets Warhammers and Battleaxes as racial proficiencies. I'm not a good powerbuilder by any means, but as far as I can see this will be the build of choice of those who are. Maybe future books will change that, though.
Even exclusing action surges and feats and fighter proficencies, I fighter would still expect to add strength to the damage roll.
1d10 = 5.5dps
1d10+3 (or 4) = 8.5dps, which is a massively significant difference for just a basic attack
I have to admit though, a d10 damage ranged cantrip is massively broken. I still can't believe that made it through testing.
@Walstafa - A Great Weapon Fighting style character only rerolls 1s and 2s on the first damage roll, leading to some average I'm too unskilled at math to calculate, but you can definitely still end up with 2-12 damage.
And this still means you have to optimize your fighter to get what the wizard gets by default.